My sixteen-year old daughter left for Israel this week, together with a group of 50 other girls her age. Tourism doesn’t usually thrive when missiles are falling, yet not a single girl cancelled the trip.
My wife Malkie and I, the other girls' parents (and local Federation Directors who flew there this week), know that ‘playing it absolutely safe,’ and decreasing Israel’s tourism, would be handing a victory to the terrorists.
Every once in a while, we get an opportunity to stare our values in the face and ask “how much does this mean to me?” We need to be ready with an answer.
Today marks eighty-seven years since the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn, was freed from Communist captivity.
When the Marxists took power in Russia, they were homicidally brutal in their passionate drive to destroy Judaism. In conventional thinking, the Previous Rebbe (Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn), a world-renowned Rabbi running a network of religious institutions, had a lot to fear. But his thinking was principled, not conventional. He stood for G-dliness, and he would not back down in the face of Man.
The Rebbe was incarcerated in the feared Spalerno prison, beaten and sentenced to death. His response was to stand tall and demand his religious rights. He never handed his captors the gift of his fear.
When the authorities eventually commuted his death sentence, and sent him from prison to relative freedom in exile, the government reserved a train-ride which would have him travelling on Shabbat. He refused to leave that hellhole until he could be guaranteed a trip that protected his religious values. He would not bend.
When he was finally released, the Rebbe spoke publicly at the train station. Ignoring the Communist operatives in the crowd, he publicly declared, “These oppressors can only exercise power over our bodies, never over our souls! The imprisonments and torture are temporary; our values are timeless. Stand tall and keep strengthening your religious observance!”
The Rebbe stood for principle, even in the face of life-and-death adversity. Today is the day he persevered. So it’s the perfect time to ask ourselves: “What do I stand for, for if I bend under pressure, was I ever really standing?”
Stand tall. The Rebbe did. We can too.
ב"ה